1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing method, a color material cartridge and a printer. Particularly, the present invention relates to a printing method for printing on a medium with a color material, a color material cartridge that stores therein advance payment information on a printing and a printer that reads/writes the advance payment information.
2. Related Art
A printer system that calculates the charge for a user of the printer has been known, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-215368. The printer system calculates the charge of the printer based on various parameters such as the volume of file spooled and the amount of consumable supplies. However, there has been a problem that the provider of the printer system can not easily collect the charge from the user. Thus, a prepaid printer system being capable of easily collecting the charge from the user is considered. For example, a prepaid printer system in which information on credits (charge) is stored in the IC chip and the IC chip is mounted on an ink cartridge removably attached to the printer is considered.
However, in the case that the ink cartridge already has the IC chip storing therein information on ink, if a new IC chip storing therein information on ink is mounted on the ink cartridge, the printer can not read/write the information on ink stored in the added new IC chip.